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Small Success Thursday: Running Down a Dream Edition

Welcome back to Small Success Thursday, hosted by CatholicMom.com. This is our chance to put our week in perspective and take note of the good things that happened this week. Don’t worry that your accomplishments are too small — there’s no such thing here!

I missed posting last week because we were driving to Tennessee to pick our girls up from their annual Grandparents Vacation with their cousins. My parents take their five grandchildren on vacation every year, and this year they went to Wyndham’s Great Smokey Mountains resort with a huge water park. My girls spent the week swimming and relaxing while Nathan and I spent that week on a staycation where we ate out every night and tried out pubs and breweries in the area.

I gained 3 pounds. (And it was worth it!)

But on to the successes!

Since the beginning of June, I’ve been running, usually three times a week. It keeps coming up in my Small Success posts because I’m so excited about the progress I’ve been making! I’m halfway through Couch to 5K, and I’m amazed at the difference between now and four weeks ago, when I started.

Four weeks ago, I couldn’t run 1 minute without panting like crazy. I was so grateful for the 2 minutes of walking in between each 1 minute run, and I sounded like an asthmatic dog on a 103º day by the end of the last run.

The day before yesterday, I went for a walk during my younger daughter’s dance class. It was still 91º, so I decided I wasn’t going to run. But I had this hour and a half to go for a nice, long, fast-paced walk. I walked for 5:20, and suddenly wanted to run.

Let me say that again, in case you missed it: I WANTED TO RUN.

That was a whole new idea to me, but I went with it. I decided to see if I could run for longer than 5 minutes, which is the length of the longer runs in Couch to 5K this week. And I ran for 7 minutes straight! Then I ran again later on for 2:30, and some of that was uphill, too! I realized that the course I had taken would result in me going about 3 miles, so I decided that was silly. I didn’t want to go 3 miles. I wanted to go 3.1 miles! And then, when I hit 2.87 miles, I decided I would RUN THE LAST THREE TENTHS!

And I did! I ran through 3.17, listening to the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” blaring in my headphones, talking myself up those last three hills that I was running on!

I had a cool-down walk afterwards, but I felt like (pardon my French here, but there’s no other way I can think of to say it right now) such a badass!

Why did I do this, in 91º heat, on a day that I wasn’t counting towards Couch to 5K, on a day I said I wasn’t going to actually run? Because I wanted to see if I could do it. I wanted to see if I could run longer than the time on the app. That way, when I ran the actual workout for Couch to 5K, I would KNOW I could do it. I would KNOW that I could run at the end of a hard run, up hills.

And you know what? I ran yesterday, too. I did the prescribed workout. And this happened:

So there you go. Three successes, none of them small to me.

How about you? Chime in below, or blog about it and leave your link at CatholicMom.com!